According to user reports in the Google Maps help forum, Google Latitude, the real-time location app that lets you tell people where you are in this great big world, is currently down.

The first report of the outage was posted roughly one day ago. Latitude appeared to only be down for users of the mobile app for Android but as of writing this the desktop app doesn’t seem to be working, either (see lead image). As far as the desktop version goes, if you try to share your location, you’ll find yourself with nothing other than a cornflower-blue abyss with the dubious “Unknown Location” as your locale. 31 posts have been made to the forum, all corroborating that Latitude is not functioning properly.

Over at Search Engine Roundtable, Barry Schwartz confirmed with Google Map’s community manager that there is a bug afflicting Google Latitude at the moment but that a fix is on the way.

We asked our Google Maps people for an update, but as of publishing this article we hadn’t heard back from them.

In the meantime, playing with that Unknown Location feature is peculiar. For some reason, it’s not just a big blue abyss you’re sent to but somewhere in the Pacific Ocean southwest of Hawaii and just east of the islands of Buariki, Bonriki, and Bairiki. What’s neat about this location is that this specific spot is almost exactly where the International Date Line is.

Fun factoid of the day: Google Latitude defaults you to the earliest beginning of the the day when it’s not working.

Update: As of 5:21PM this afternoon, Latitude still doesn’t appear to working; still no word from Google. Guess you’ll just have to let people know where you are the old-fashioned way: telling them directly.